


Kitchen Witch

by AlterEgon



Category: The Numair Chronicles - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28135170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: We know Varice is happy in the kitchens, but we never get to actually see her at it. Here are a few scenes of her doing what she loves and does well, at different times through her life, and in connection with a few "world events".
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. 439

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geri_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geri_chan/gifts).



> geri_chan, I hope you enjoy your gift!

“Wait!” Varice winced inwardly at the sharpness in her voice, born from a mix of urgency and vexation at herself. She’d felt a tickle somewhere in the depths of her mind ever since she had handled those bags of sugar for the first time earlier.

She’d shrugged it off – tried to at least, but it wouldn’t quite work. There was a feeling, almost like a mental itch that she couldn’t scratch. Had she been asked, she wouldn’t even have been able to say whether it was something she had perceived with her body’s senses, or with her Gift, as she’d automatically brushed it over the supplies brought in. She did that, as if to welcome them to the kitchen. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, though she thought that the cooking mages in charge of the kitchens knew it very well. She’d noticed an eye or two on her here and there when she’d done it in the past.

“What?” the man who had been about to measure out the sugar demanded, annoyance clear in his tone. Everyone in here knew that she had a knack for kitchen work, and kitchen witchery. She took every opportunity she could to help out and work in the kitchens, volunteering and snatching up every lesson that presented itself even when her own family sneered at her studies. Still, she wasn’t officially a student of kitchen magic since her father had put down his foot about that, and she certainly had no authority in here.

She shook her head, suddenly feeling uncertain. What was she going to say? The sugar feels off, but I don’t know how or why? 

“I—” She couldn’t let it slide. The feeling was there, and it was real. She drew herself up straight and met his eyes. “There is something wrong with that bag. And those.” She indicated the ones that had come in along with the one in front of them earlier with a jerk of her head. “

“Nonsense!” Came the curt response. “What would be wrong with them? They were just brought in this morning. Besides, Sugar doesn’t—”

He broke off as she used her gift to let a shield spring up around the freshly opened bag.

“Get someone to have a look at this,” she told him.

They had drawn an audience by now. She didn’t look up to check whose side they were on. She didn’t want to know if there was more amusement or annoyance in the eyes watching her. She wasn’t going to hope for approval – not if she couldn’t even say what had set her off herself.

“If we’re not finished in time, it’s on your head,” he grumbled.

“I’ll do whatever washing up is left for you when your shift runs out,” she informed him, hoping that at least the prospect of not having to stay and finish his work late if she delayed things much longer would get him to move more quickly. She could have sent one of the onlookers, but she didn’t want him to test her shield. This wasn’t her specialty, and he probably could have wrestled his way through it, had he tried.

Of course, that would have surely caused enough of a commotion to draw a cook in charge – preferably a Master, since magic was involved.

He left with a grunt that she chose not to have heard.

Taking a breath, she wrenched her thoughts back into focus. She wouldn’t have long and she figured she’d better make those seconds count.

She poured her Gift into the bag, running it through the crystals in the same way she would handle it if she – or someone else – had accidentally poured one powdered substance into another and she needed them separate again.

Unfortunately, not knowing what she was calling, she had a hard time getting a grasp on what else was in the bag. At least she was sure by now that she wasn’t making anything up.

“Go about it the other way around,” a voice broke through her concentration.

Looking around, she found herself facing Master Mallon. She’d hoped to study kitchen magic under her some day, though in spite of her continued interest had given up on hoping the woman even knew she was more than the random volunteer in the kitchens ever since she’d been banned from formal instruction in the area. She must have come in within the last few minutes. In any case, Varice hadn’t seen her around yet on that day.

“Master?” she asked, unsure what the instruction had been about.

The woman picked up the bag of sugar and unceremoniously dumped its contents onto the worktop.

“You’re failing at calling the thing you don’t know,” the Master observed. “I believe there’s also something in there that you do know.”

Oh. With a nod and a mental slap on her head for not thinking of it on her own, she returned her focus – and her gift – to the heap of white crystals on the counter, this time using it as a sieve that caught the sugar – and only the sugar – and pushing it sideways.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds before she was looking at a neat cone of sugar heaped as only magic could make it stay on one side of the counter, and a scattering of seemingly identical white crystals where the bag had been dumped before.

Someone among her audience snickered, apparently assuming she had been merely untidy in moving the sugar, and just been proven wrong in her assumption that it had been contaminated. The sound was cut off as someone standing nearby apparently did not share the same degree of amusement.

Varice carefully brushed her leftover crystals into another tidy, albeit much smaller, heap. Her lips had tightened. She realized what she was looking at now.

“Well?” The Master asked her.

She probed at the substance she had separated with her gift, then for good measure picked up a tiny amount on the tip of her finger and touched it to her tongue.

“Someone spiked the sugar with silly crystals,” she declared. It was the nickname given by the university students to a substance that had grown in popularity recently. Originating in the potioneers’ laboratories as a by-product from the extraction of other, more useful substances from a specific plant’s juicy leaves and should have been classified as garbage. Ground down, it crumbled into a crystal structure barely distinguishable from sugar but for its distinct lack of any flavor of its own. She could only guess that a prank using exactly that property was what had revealed another one: while perfectly useless for anything on its own, the crystals happily interacted with the stimulating substance in some teas and coffee, producing a tipsy – or downright drunk – condition in the user.

Though not approved or condoned, its use had spread among the older students looking for something to perk up their gatherings with little effort.

“A prank, I assume,” the man she had stopped earlier grumbled as the master nodded.

“No prank involving food is a good idea if you have the second in line for the throne eating your food.” Her voice was cold.

Varice could see the man’s lips part as if he wanted to speak, but the glare from the master’s eyes silenced him before he had uttered the first word. She thought she knew what he had been going to say. Ozorne had guards who checked his food for him before they let him eat it. They used magic. Anyone could probably guess at that. Chances were that they would have detected the addition and stopped anything embarrassing from happening.

It wasn’t hard to imagine that neither Ozorne’s guards, nor Ozorne himself, and probably a few other people to boot wouldn’t have been too happy about the entire incident, however.

The Master turned back to Varice.

“Kingsford. A hypothetical situation: Instead of some prankster spicing our sugar with what you call ‘silly crystals’, some conspirators managed to spoil our supply of sugar as to make it unusable. You can’t drop a course of your menu and you can’t afford a long delay anymore. What do you serve for dessert?”

“Really now,” the man, still standing where he had been, scoffed. “Surely we can just clean up the sugar and continue with our work.” He gestured at the separated ingredients on the worktop.

“I’m sure you are aware of the meaning of the word ‘hypothetical’,” the Master informed him, face unmoved. “If not, a dictionary might be a good place to start. Well, Kingsford?”

Varice had taken the seconds of respite to glance around the kitchens and remind herself of what things they had out already and what could be used to produce an adequate dessert that required no addition of sugar.

“Date and chocolate pudding,” she said when the master’s attention was on her again. “We have almost everything out already and it can bake while the main course is eaten. Serving it warm is a bonus rather than an issue. Vanilla and Coconut sauces to go with it.” She took a breath, and then a chance. “If I’m allowed to use my Gift for the freezing so it won’t take forever, and we don’t need gigantic amounts, watermelon granita. Something cold will be appreciated in this weather. Served with coconut, date, cashew creams.”

The master gave her a brief nod. “Get to it,” she said, standing aside to watch. “Kitchen’s yours.”

Varice stared for a moment. Then a pointed look from the master at the candle marking the passage of time spurred her into action. She hadn’t said which of her options she was supposed to make – or have made, she assumed, so she was going to go with both. Choice wouldn’t hurt and if she could rope another couple of mages into the freezing, they’d be fine.

The master watched her assign tasks and decide how much was to be made of which dish, her face unreadable. Just as Varice was about to turn to her own work, she spoke again.

“Kingsford, you’re here as a volunteer, not a student. Why?”

“My father forbade me from furthering my studies of kitchen magic,” Varice admitted. It wasn’t like the master couldn’t or wouldn’t find out the truth either way if she wished.

“Is that so?” A moment’s silence followed. Then the older woman sighed. “You’ve caused quite the delay and excitement here. I expect you to report to me for an hour before breakfast. I’ll have… appropriate work for you.”

Varice turned to her work to hide the grin that spread on her face. Thinly veiled as punishment though these lessons would be, she doubted her father would see through it. And next term… 

Well, she’d think of next term once that came around. Maybe the master would even help her convince the old man.


	2. 443

Varice had forced a neutral expression onto her face before she’d stepped outside, and she kept it stubbornly fixed in place ass he went about her day as if nothing was amiss. She was too well aware that betraying her feelings where anyone could see and report on it could be a death sentence at this point.

How had they come so far? Just a few years ago, the three of them had been inseparable – she, and Arram, and Ozorne. Certainly, Ozorne had always had his moments, his gloomy spells and the times of barely controllable rage when he thought he saw any connection to the people who had killed his father. Still, he’d been loyal to them, as they had to him. A good friend. Someone to be trusted.

When had that changed, exactly?

Had it been with his coronation a year before? Before that, when his last cousin’s death had made him heir to the throne? Earlier, when he had become second in line, assigned guards and required to step more actively into a role he had never wanted?

Or had it been even before that, and they had merely been too blind, or too determined to see only the best in him, to acknowledge it?

She wasn’t sure that she wanted to go there, though her mind replayed scenes from their days at the university together for her, unbidden and relentless.

Had the signs always been there, and they merely too used to them to recognize them? Would they truly have been fine if their friend hadn’t been forced into that undesired position?

And, in the wake of that, another question: Had it been undesired?

Frequently as Ozorne had told them, or anyone who would listen, that he had no designs as to the throne, that he had no wish to ever rule the country, that all he wanted to be was a master mage and a scholar… was it true? Had it ever been true? Or had it been nothing but his way to protect himself, to keep the ill luck at bay that had taken his uncles and his cousins one by one, as it had his father?

She knew the story of how he had come to be called the leftover prince, or the child who had proclaimed that he would one day be emperor. If that had been more than a child’s misunderstanding – if that had been what he had had his mind set on all along, carefully disguised under reassurances and claims that he wanted no such thing, or even if that had only happened later, but still during their time at the university together– then he had deceived them for years.

She wouldn’t have thought that he’d had that in him – but neither would she have thought that he had it in him to have Arram – her Arram, _their_ Arram – arrested and tried for treason.

He hadn’t as much as listened to her when she’d tried to reason with him, eventually implying that she could join Arram in his cell if she so desired.

She did not.

Though she called herself all kinds of coward for it and didn’t even try to deny the disgust she felt for her own decision when it welled up, she couldn’t have done anything different. There were people she cared about, and Ozorne was well aware of them. She wouldn’t sign their death warrants along with her own. And besides that, she didn’t want to die. Could you fault a person for choosing life?

Part of her insisted that you could, but it wasn’t above being shut up by the other part that readily pointed out that, at this point, all she had to do to secure herself a trip to the silent cells under the palace and a subsequent place on the executioner’s block, was to admit to any doubts she had that the Emperor was perfectly reasonable in his actions.

And _that_ was at least in part because, after being thrown in the inescapable cells that negated all magic inside them, Arram had gone and done the most outrageous thing: rather than waiting for his sentence and execution, he had escaped and vanished without a trace.

If she couldn’t betray her feelings over Arram’s arrest and sentence, she certainly couldn’t betray her feelings over his flight, or her worry for his continued safety.

Still, the thoughts would not end.

Was he safe?

Was he even still alive?

Had he long been caught and killed, secretly, without any great fuss?

No, surely not. Surely, the way Ozorne was now, he would have made a public spectacle of it. He would have expected her to be there, to witness. To confirm to him that she was on his side, not Arram’s. That brought her back to trying to figure out when those sides had ceased to be the same side, and that way lay madness.

So she kept herself busy with work, as she prepared Ozorne’s feasts. She was, in theory, too young and inexperienced in state functions to be put in charge of the Emperor’s entertainment, but Ozorne didn’t care about that. It was, he had reminded her, what she had wanted.

That much was true.

Presently, she was working on a set of cakes, unique to her kitchen, as far as she was aware. She’d discovered the technique by accident, one day when she had, reached out with her magic and, instead of merely cooling off the cake fresh out of the oven, had frozen it solid. She’d been distracted that day, too, though over much more pleasant matters. Worried that quick heating would make the cake unpleasantly dry, she had decided to let it thaw on its own and proceeded to apply the glaze to it.

She’d intended for it to be an impressive affair of a blue-and-white marble pattern.

What she’d gotten had been nothing short of glorious, as her marble glaze settled on the frozen cake to form a perfectly smooth, mirror-shiny surface.

There were several of those cakes in front of her now, mirror-glazed in pink, blue, red-and-white, green and pure white. Each of them was going to acquire an application of fruit to match the color scheme, arranged in artful patterns and styles.

She was staring at her vague reflection in the white-glazed cake.

Arram had joked, once, that she could bake herself a scrying cake this way. She’d laughed at the suggestion then.

She didn’t laugh at it now, when, between her worry and her need to know, and her Gift touching the cake to probe for the moment when the glaze had hardened just enough to not destroy the mirroring effect by adding anything to it, yet not to the point where her additions wouldn’t stick well, the reflection of the kitchen lights in the round surface flickered in a way the lights did not, giving way to an image that had no business on the cake.

For a moment, she saw a man, curled up and miserable in what seemed to be the hold of a ship. It took a second glance to recognize Arram, his face pale with seasickness under bruises she didn’t want to know the origins of, his hair hacked off unevenly, his chin and cheeks unshaven.

The image disappeared before she could take in anything else.

Without thinking, she found herself grabbing the cake. No matter what else went onto Ozorne’s plate, even potentially, this one cake could not. There was no telling what would happen if the Emperor Mage, as he styled himself, took it upon himself to examine any spells she had worked on his pastry before serving it.

She took a step back from the counter, her foot placed carefully for effect.

The sharp pain of a twisted ankle felt almost triumphant as she went down, plate and cake hitting the floor in a spray of shards and cream.

Arram was safe for now.

She’d just have to be careful not to touch another cake with those thoughts in her mind.


	3. 451

Varice stood aside, inspecting the dishes prepared and kept hot and fresh by magic, waiting for the moment when they could be served. Long gone were the days when she herself had stood in the kitchens and worked her magic and her cooking skills to make everything just the way she – or her emperor – wanted it.

These days, she mainly supervised, queen that she was over a small army of kitchen staff, of cooks and bakers and artists, both Gifted and not.

Some days, she missed those times more than others.

Today, she thought she could have used the calming effect of immersing herself in kitchen work.

Not long now, and she would go out into the banquet hall along with her creations, to play the hostess for the Emperor’s guests – guests that included a Tortallan delegation, and among them Arram Draper, freshly pardoned, though under strict restrictions to be observed.

Ozorne had been livid when he’d realized that there would be no way around allowing his former friend to return, unharmed, to the country he had called home for so long.

She’d managed to talk him through the worst of the anger, or so she hoped. She’d gotten quite good at that over the years.

It did little to alleviate her uneasiness. Ozorne didn’t like to be told what to do, and he usually found a way to do what he wanted after all, even if seemingly giving in to demands. He’d gotten good at _that_ over the years, too.

It wasn’t hard to guess what it was that he wanted: Arram’s death.

How he was planning to get that was anyone’s guess, but the thought filled her with cold dread.

Did Arram understand just how dangerously thin the ice he was dancing on here was?

If he did, she needed to know it for her own peace of mind.

If he didn’t, he had to find out before the worst came to pass.

The time spent away from them, fleeing and later living at the royal court of Tortall, had changed more than just Arram’s name. Still, he remained one of her two closest friends of her youth – of her life. If he still harbored friendly feelings for her, he probably was the only one remaining to her now. She had no illusions about Ozorne. The man would have sacrificed her – or even thrown her into a cell and had her executed – without a second thought if he had felt that she was more useful to him dead than alive, or if she’d given him any reason to doubt her loyalty.

Was he aware of how much Ozorne had changed, even beyond the parts that were obvious? There wasn’t anything left of the boy they had grown up with, or even the young man who had once thrown his best friend into a cell. The man on the throne now might just as well have been an entirely different person, dangerous – and more than a little insane, as she had come to realize more and more often in the last years. His ambition and plans for conquest, no matter the means, seemed to know now bounds.

That ambition was also what was behind her grandest creation yet, currently under construction in another part of the kitchen, where hands were busy molding and shaping spun sugar and marzipan and carving pieces of cake, to be eventually assembled into a whole.

The creation would be an edible miniature of the palace itself, and it had been Ozorne’s suggestion. He’d phrased it as a joke when he had suggested it, implying that she could have shrugged it off and declared the idea impossible.

She knew better than that. There was no impossible when the Emperor wished for something to happen. And so, knowing of the consequences of failure, people somehow managed to make the impossible possible, just as she had put together the plans for his cake palace.

She needed to know what Arram knew, or what he suspected, but there was no way she could ask him about it in sight of the Emperor or his slaves.

Well. She’d arranged for them to sit together at the end of the table for the meal. If she didn’t manage to get the message to him that she needed to talk to him in private, she would be doing something wrong.

She had no intention of doing anything wrong this time.

She knew that her past relationship with Arram wasn’t a secret. She was amused by the way his young student had glared at her before, though she also wasn’t blind to seeing the looks he gave Daine when he didn’t pay attention.

She didn’t expect him to be planning, or even interested in, reviving their former relationship, but no one needed to know that.

Let them believe that it was he lover she wanted back, rather than an opportunity to bring him up to speed and warn. She’d certainly give them reason to confirm that mistaken assumption.

The only thing she was hoping was that Arram would realize she wasn’t stupid enough to try for _that_.

Her inspections done, she nodded her approval at her staff.

Time to serve. Time to get this show started – both the one that Ozorne was expecting, and the one that he was not.


End file.
